1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a component and supplier management (CSM) system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a CSM system that uses a three-tier classification model having search schema, a virtual object, and databases. Search schema is interfaced to the databases via virtual object hierarchies to search for components with designated attributes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Companies are constantly producing new and modified products. A large factor in the profitability of a product is the time it takes to complete and market the new product. Most companies have many different components existing at the company that were designed for a different product and are in stock and ready for use. Companies can speed a product's time to market, reduce development costs, and reduce manufacturing costs by reusing these already existing company resources. By utilizing existing information, parts, components, design drawings, documents, processes, statistical information, as well as resources outside the company such as databases of parts suppliers and the like, one can significantly shorten design and production cycles and development costs.
Typically, companies are spread out over the world and include many different sites with different databases listing the components available at that site and outside resources have different databases. Most of the databases organize components by part number, and information is retrievable using only this key. In addition, different databases each require different search schema defined for the particular database. When performing a search with one schema you may not be able to find a part even though it exists in one of the databases. Therefore this search technique is not accurate. The prior art two-tier search model includes search schema defined or hard-wired for a single database instance.
FIG. 1 shows a prior art system that has a two-tier classification system. The two-tier classification model shown in FIG. 1 consists of a component centralized database 100 and predefined search schema 110. There can only be a single search schema for searching the single database. Each different database instance requires a different schema.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a system that allows a user to search different types of databases spread out throughout a company and outside the company and to have flexibility to enter search schema in many different forms based on user preferences.